Rise of the Roman Republic

Rise of the Roman Republic covers four campaigns from the early Roman times: The Samnites, Alexander of Epirus, Pyrrhus, Hannibal. They all have various difficulties: From a pure introductionary scenario (Hannibal), to pretty heavy stuff (Pyrrhus). GMT planned to release a whole line, covering all of the campaigns of the ancient times. After the second part (Carthage), that project was not continued though. Most of the scenarios are for two players. Like many other Richard Berg games, this one also uses a chit pull mechanism. Each turn covers a year and players gain activation chits depending of the ability of their leaders.

Movement is interesting: There are no movement points. Armys may move with their leaders without any limit, but, depending on the number of provinces they move through and the terrain they cross, they will accumulate attrition. Combat is handeld by a die roll…modified by lots of tables. Numbers matter, but a good leader is often more important. There´s a lot of luck in the game. Combat results are often hard to predict, random events, random leaders…

Overall, the core system seems to be okay with a lot of potential, but the rules are poorly written. In addition, the game comes with a Scenario book, wich is also a second rule book. And it is a complete mess: all the special rules for the Roman command structures are just horrible and suck every enjoyment out of the game. You can see my suffering here. I might come back to this one day, but for now I´m happy to leave it in the shelf!